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August 3, 2008

Are Phones to replace dedicated mp3 players?

are these devices slowly fading away as the same functions are becoming standard in mobile phones? Let's take a look at the new Zen, for example:

* 2- or 4-GB of flash storage ($99 and $129, respectively), with 8- and 16-GB models coming later. That's plenty of room to carry tunes, but most new phones have some internal storage and many are including microSD expansion options.
* 32 hours of audio playback, which is very good. Most phones can't approach that, but some can play audio for well over 20 hours.
* A built in speaker for the Mosaic. Nice, but probably of limited use.
* 1.8-inch display on the Zen to display photos and videos. This doesn't exactly trump most modern phones.
* A built-in FM radio. That's definitely attractive to some and I've seen very few phones with this capability.

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Posted by pajaro at August 3, 2008 7:57 AM